Like a Sunset
by OnTheImportanceOfLungs
Summary: It was all over. They were the last few to remain, but Harry had a plan. Someone had to go back. They'd make everything right. He was so sure of it... Harry/Fleur


**Love Like a Sunset**

Prologue

A pleading boy, _turn back the clock_.  
His speeding head, _her speeding heart_.  
A noble thought, _a river rock_.  
A bleeding scar, _a bleeding start_.

 **The Seeker**

Two thuds.

Systole. Diastole.

Walk away before you have to run.

The thuds repeated, a tad more urgently.

Four decades and her pulse still quickened on sight.

Harry Potter remembered the heartbeat of everyone he had ever known and it screamed at him.

 _Do not let your work be for naught. You only took what you could carry. Let her go. Leave._

But he stood, unable to move, just as he'd been afraid he would. He felt a profound tiredness to his bones. Harry remembered that he had never been the Master after all, that he'd never truly united the Hallows. When he let himself hear the sound of her heart, he remembered that first unforgettable fire.

He heard her voice, he heard his name. It grew in volume and urgency and Harry wanted to turn and run, again. But Harry was ready. So what if she was there to seize the truth, seize the Wand? So what if she would finally duel him and learn that all legends were truly just lies?

And then there was silence because he had not moved and she was beside him. Harry had a peculiar feeling in his chest and began to believe he might have broken because he could not feeling anything in his chest.

 **Valkyrion**

Fleur had never been the victim because Fleur Delacour had been born in the wrong time. As her allies were cut down beside her and her enemies dwindled by her wandwork, she still was as uncompromising and beautiful as the heroines of the distant past. Fleur had burned bright when she scattered the ashes of the husband she had lost during her wedding feast. Fleur had burned brighter when she walked through halls of marble and Fiendfyre, desperate for a piece of her sister to bury, be it ash or charred bone.

When she met his eyes, the cold, gray light of evening showed her nothing less than what she had expected.

Harry Potter was a living, walking, breathing mask. He had had forty years to perfect his sophistry and could fool anyone. But the thing about great wizards and witches was a true insight into another's personality, to truly know their heart. Fleur looked into Harry's eyes and saw a final ember which burned quietly and true and the excitement threatened to overwhelm her. He was the real Harry Potter and Harry Potter was real, just as she had remembered.

They observed each other and she knew he was sizing her up as well. They let the current of each other's personality wash over the clearing, a conversation in its own right. Harry Potter hid himself behind the ravages of age and worry, behind calculated cowardice and white flags he didn't mean. The fear was real but there was still a confidence there which he himself might not have known he had.

No matter where Harry Potter sought refuge, he would never be someone displaced. Harry Potter owned his world and he felt that the least he owed it was his best.

And when he opened his mouth to speak, despite the warble of disuse, she knew he could still command armies.

"I was just a boy caught in something bigger than him," he said, settling on ambivalence. "And I walked away to prove it."

 _Lies_.

"You haven't let it go, you've risked everything."

Harry considered this, then shook his head. "I haven't risked enough. Were I as clever as Albus Dumbledore, we would have won."

Fleur smiled lightly, but it didn't reach her eyes. "I'm too old to believe in certainty."

Harry did not speak, so she continued. "We did grow old. Old and weary. And if Dumbledore was right and death is but the next great adventure, we might stop being weary in ten lifetimes or so."

A chuckle escaped Harry. "Do you think we might have been born old? That we might still carry some debt for something we'd done in another life?"

Fleur did think that, and often, but she didn't want to admit it.

"You won't bring me back into the fold except by wandpoint," Harry warned her. In response, Fleur drew her wand.

"If there's no other way, I'll do what I must. Even if it is to keep you safe," Fleur said. Her words sounded strange and hollow. Harry Potter didn't need protection. Harry had never needed protection. She needed him to protect them. And Fleur knew that Harry was well and truly aware of that.

"I probably couldn't stop you. I haven't been in a duel since the night my wand broke." That was more than thirty years ago and Fleur remembered it well. "I'd probably escape pretty easily though." The defiance shone in his posture and, more importantly, in his eyes once more. But this was not sustained and Harry seemed to droop just a bit. Fleur felt a shred of despair.

"Don't you want vengeance?" she tried, feeling transparent and ineffective. "Revenge for our fallen?" She regretted stooping to this with a creeping embarrassment in her spine. Harry considered her words and the embarrassment grew. A sort of derision that Harry hid from his expression had reached his eyes. Harry could not find anything to say. A younger Harry would have protested, or blabbered. He would have found something to fill the air. He would have been paranoid that she would think less of him.

Harry was a man who had been old for a long time and he was unafraid of the silence. It was probably a welcome friend to him. As strange as it was, she felt his serenity and found some calm as well. Harry deliberately turned his attention to the grave he had come to visit in the first place.

"Could you have ever believed that we'd be dragged in for such a long haul?"

Fleur did not know who he was addressing — her or the memory of Hermione Granger.

"We lost so many years," Harry said, shaking his head.

"Do not pity the dead," Fleur began gently.

"But pity those who live without love," Harry finished. He fingered a curious, cracked ring absentmindedly and turned to her. "I've traveled all the continents and I have walked in the shadow of death. I'm tired."

"We're all tired."

"Is humanity worth it? Is my existence what stops him from being defeated by a younger man? It took many years for the Dark Lords of yore to be lose their grip on power."

Fleur didn't want to believe it.

"Maybe what it takes is for me to crumble to ash for the Order to be born anew." Harry drew a wand from his back pocket.

 _Surely he doesn't mean for me to duel him._

"Do you always come here on this day, hoping to find me the year I finally cracked?" Harry asked. There was no malice in his voice.

Fleur nodded.

"I thought someone might," Harry decided.

"You were expecting me or someone like me." Suddenly Fleur was apprehensive and a bubble of excitement grew in her stomach.

"I was hoping it'd be you," Harry said. "You or perhaps Cho." He sighed.

Fleur wondered how he knew Cho had survived for this long when mostly everyone hadn't. Perhaps it was a coincidence. Perhaps he just meant girls he'd carried a torch for. Ginny and Hermione were both long dead, after all.

"We are the children of a different generation, a long time past. And for us, I can only offer some sort of wger, something that no living man could grasp."

Her heart pounded and he knew. The breeze had turned cold but not because of nightfall. She had seen this Harry Potter before, quite sparingly, but she had. And he was more powerful than ever. Harry Potter had made a decision, something that had changed the world and the good earth had snapped to attention. It knew. She knew.

"It is a bitter pill to swallow and maybe it would be quite forced…" Harry rambled. He turned to her suddenly, genius sparking in his eyes. "Do you know the story of Ulysses and the Cyclops?"

Of course she did.

"No man blinded the Cyclops. No man must do what I cannot, Fleur."

Fleur was quite alarmed. She was unsure of what he was about to do and assumed the worst. Her grip on her wand tightened and in response, so did his.

"Magic is so very discriminatory, Fleur. It is so… technically correct sometimes. It never realizes the true strength that mortals can bend to their wills, that we can ascribe to differences…"

Fleur was beyond alarmed now. Harry spoke in the same manner as the late Albus Dumbledore and it was truly unnerving.

"Do you know what these truths of magic are, Fleur?"

Fleur shook her head. These were not questions for her. Magic was a means to do good. Magic was a means to change the world. And she hoped Harry still agreed.

"Perhaps you might discover it one day, long ago."

"You're not making any sense, Harry," Fleur said, trying to keep her voice calm, trying to not make any sudden moves in his instability.

In a quick motion that Fleur nearly reacted to with some violence, Harry pulled off his ring. Fleur grit her teeth and forced herself not to step back, but clutched her wand ever tighter.

"Do you know what this is, Fleur?" She didn't and he knew. "This is the River's Stone. It is with its blessing that we roll along."

Fleur was now desperately hoping that Harry was not just a madman and in equal measure hoping it was a magical artifact and not just any river rock.

"Will you wear it?"

Fleur paused, knowing that she was on the edge of a precipice. But this was Harry Potter. Harry Potter had changed, but his eyes hadn't. There was no crazed gleam in them, just calculation and hope. Fleur made her decision.

"Yes." If he had fooled her all along, and had been taken by the other side, then she would die here. She knew his talent and she would not see it turned on her comrades and allies. If he had fooled her all along, then she would die here for her folly.

"Ugly, but very powerful," Harry commented, staring at the ring. He seemed suddenly uncertain, but he took her hand and slipped it onto her left forefinger gently. Her other hand still pointed a wand at him, halfheartedly. "No, not ugly. Not when you wear it."

His hands clasped themselves over hers, as though he couldn't bear to part with the ring. The wand was slowly lowered.

"Do you remember the first time you'd ever spoken to me, Fleur?"

Despite herself, a worry grew in her chest again. Something huge was happening. The trees around them swayed in the breeze. Fleur truly hoped she was imagining things because cracks seemed to form in the world around them. The tombstone of Hermione Granger shuddered as thought it was weeping.

"I said something insulting, didn't I?" she admitted, grudgingly.

"No, no," Harry chuckled. He looked dangerously at peace. "You told me to pass the bouillabaisse." Despite herself, Fleur smiled.

Harry turned the ring on her forefinger anti-clockwise slowly and, without warning, kissed her on the lips.

"I think I waited my entire life for that," he whispered, a bliss creeping on his face. Around them, the world was tearing itself asunder, but neither of them seem affected.

The tombstone cracked in half, but Fleur didn't see any of it. All she saw was Harry Potter raise his strange wand of Elder to his own temple.

She drew in a breath so sharp her nostrils stung, but she knew she could not stop him.

"Avada Kedavra," Harry promised, but in his eyes, all she saw was a wish.

 _Good luck to you, Fleur Delacour._

His body tumbled to the ground as Fleur vanished.

And then their cursed world vanished as well.


End file.
